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North Stoke (Dec VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • North Stoke (Dec. 2019) • Religious History • p. 1 VCH Oxfordshire Texts in Progress NORTH STOKE Religious History North Stoke church from the north-east including the reconstructed west tower. A well-endowed church with wide jurisdiction existed by the late 11th century and probably much earlier, associated for a time with a prebend in the chapel of Wallingford castle. Bromhall priory (Berks.) appropriated it in 1392, and thereafter its high-status but mostly non-resident rectors were replaced by meagrely endowed vicars, presented from the 1520s by St John’s College, Cambridge. Following the Reformation the Catholic Stonors remained as resident lords into the 17th century, and small-scale Protestant Nonconformity surfaced briefly in the 19th, focused chiefly on Wallingford. Newnham Murren remained a chapelry VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • North Stoke (Dec. 2019) • Religious History • p. 2 until 1907, and Ipsden (technically at least) until 1993, when the benefice was incorporated into a wider team ministry. Church Origins and Parochial Organization North Stoke’s ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Ipsden, Newnham Murren, and probably (until the late 12th century) Mongewell suggests a pre-Conquest church of above average status, possibly a small minster. Newnham and (technically) Ipsden remained chapelries until the 20th century, although both had burial and baptismal rights from the Middle Ages, and from 1700 North Stoke’s vicars lived at Ipsden, which by the 1870s was seen as effectively (though not legally) the mother church.1 North Stoke church was one of several given by Miles Crispin for the endowment of prebends in the collegiate chapel of St Nicholas in Wallingford castle, probably in the late 11th century.2 It was still held as a prebend in the king’s gift in the 1220s, but from the 1230s (when the earl of Cornwall held the advowson with the honor of Wallingford) it was treated like an ordinary parish church, institutions to the rectory making no mention of the Wallingford link.3 It remained a rectory until appropriated by Bromhall priory in 1392 (a vicarage being ordained in 1396), and was transferred with the priory’s other possessions to St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1522.4 An annual 5-mark pension to St Nicholas’s chapel was then still payable by tenants of the rectory estate, presumably in lieu of the rector’s former obligation to employ a deacon to serve there.5 Crispin also gave specified tithes from North Stoke, Ipsden, and Newnham to St Mary’s abbey of Bec, the dedication of all three churches to St Mary the Virgin perhaps reflecting the abbey’s early interest: the dedication of North Stoke was certainly established by 1443.6 The parish belonged throughout to Henley rural deanery, except for a short-lived transfer to the deanery of Nettlebed in 1852–74.7 In 1849 the new ecclesiastical parish of Stoke Row was created from the eastern part of Ipsden chapelry, and in 1907–8 Newnham Murren was joined with Crowmarsh Gifford. Mongewell was added to the remaining benefice of North Stoke with Ipsden in 1927. Reorganization in 1993 saw Mongewell parish dissolved, Ipsden separated, and that, Stoke 1 Above, vol. intro.; Ipsden, Mongewell, Newnham Murren (relig. hist.). A separate chapel in the churchyard (mentioned 1396) could conceivably be another indicator of former minster status: Lincs. Arch. REG/12, f. 443; cf. J. Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Soc. (2005), 199; VCH Oxon. XIII, 38. 2 Rot. Chart. 200; VCH Berks. II, 103–4; K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, N. Christie and D.R. Roffe (eds), Wallingford: the Castle and the Town in Context (BAR Brit. Ser. 621, 2015), 53–4. 3 Rot. Welles, II, 24; below (advowson). Cf. VCH Oxon. XVIII, 147–8 (Chalgrove). 4 Above, landownership (rectory estate); below (glebe etc.). 5 SJCC, D86.29; D86.63; below (glebe). 6 H.E. Salter, ‘Two Deeds about the Abbey of Bec’, EHR 40 (1925), 75–6; C.E. Prior, ‘Dedication of Churches’, OAS Rep. (1906), 21; Lincs. Arch. REG/18, f. 175. 7 Youngs, Admin. Units, I, 406. VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • North Stoke (Dec. 2019) • Religious History • p. 3 Row, and a reconfigured North Stoke parish taken into the large team ministry of Langtree, which incorporated seven churches in all.8 Advowson The right to present to both church and prebend passed with the honor of Wallingford, which the king granted in 1229 to Richard, earl of Cornwall, expressly reserving his patronage of the Wallingford chapel prebends.9 Richard nevertheless presented to North Stoke in 1236–7, and successive earls retained the advowson until Piers Gaveston’s death in 1312, when it reverted to the Crown.10 Edward II presented in 1313 and 1325–6, but by 1334 it was held by John, earl of Cornwall, again with the honor, which from 1337 belonged to the newly created duchy of Cornwall. That passed in 1377 to Richard II,11 who in 1391 (after making several presentations) gave the advowson to Bromhall priory with permission to appropriate.12 The future Henry V disputed the priory’s right in 1403, seeking restoration (as duke of Cornwall) to the honor of Wallingford;13 the priory nevertheless presented every subsequent vicar until 1523, when Richard Allen presented for one turn under an earlier grant.14 Thereafter the advowson belonged to St John’s College, Cambridge, which remained a joint patron of the united benefice in 2018.15 Glebe, Tithes, and Vicarage The rectory was valued at 20 marks (£13 6s. 8d.) in 1219, 30 marks (£20) in 1254, 40 marks (£26 13s. 4d.) in 1279, and £23 6s. 8d. in 1291, making it the wealthiest in the deanery.16 A detailed survey in 1396 (in preparation for the vicarage ordination) found its gross income to be £50 10s., of which two fifths derived from Ipsden, a little over 30 per cent from Newnham, and under 30 per cent from North Stoke. Grain tithes made up almost three quarters of the valuation, other tithes and oblations around a fifth, and the 106-a. glebe only 6 per cent. 8 OHC, MS Oxf. Dioc. c 1884/2; http://langtreechurches.org (Nov. 2019); above, Crowmarsh Gifford, Ipsden, Mongewell, Newnham Murren (relig. hist.). 9 Rot. Welles, I, 32; II, 24; Close 1227–31, 258; Rot. Hund. II, 42. 10 Rot. Grosseteste, 449, 452–3, 456; Rot. Gravesend, 226; Reg. Sutton, VIII, 172, 176, 179–80, 185; Cal. Inq. p.m. III, p. 482. 11 Cal. Pat. 1313–17, 18; Reg. Burghersh, II, pp. 72, 74, 85, 99; Black Prince’s Reg. IV, 185, 398, 473. For the honor’s descent, VCH Oxon. VIII, 3–4. 12 Lincs. Arch. REG/10, ff. 367v., 375; REG/11, ff. 298, 316v.; Cal. Pat. 1388–92, 473. 13 Cal. Close 1402–5, 223–5. 14 Lincs. Arch. REG/25, f. 177; below (relig. life). 15 OHC, MS Oxf. Dioc. c 1884/2; Crockford’s Clerical Dir. (2018–19), 1164. 16 Book of Fees, I, 252; Lunt (ed.), Val. Norw. 304; Rot. Hund. II, 42; Tax. Eccl. 30; cf. Nonarum Inquisitiones, 136; Feudal Aids, VI, 371; above, landownership (rectory estate). VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • North Stoke (Dec. 2019) • Religious History • p. 4 Outgoings included providing chaplains for Ipsden and Newnham, upkeep of all three chancels, and providing the deacon for Wallingford castle chapel.17 The vicarage ordained in 1396 comprised a ‘priest’s house’ in North Stoke and another in Ipsden; 20 a. of arable in North Stoke, with smaller acreages in Ipsden and Newnham; small tithes, oblations, and other dues from North Stoke and Ipsden; and all of Newnham’s tithes and oblations.18 Most of the North Stoke land was apparently withheld or lost, since in 1665 St John’s College directed the tenant of its rectory estate to surrender 19 a. of open-field land to make up the glebe to 20 a., found in 1808 to actually cover only 13 acres.19 In 1425 (following parishioners’ complaints to the archbishop) the priory was ordered to pay the vicar an annual £7 stipend, and by 1526 his income was £12 a year, rising to £14 10s. in 1535.20 The vicar’s tithes were commuted in 1847 for rent charges of £765 15s. (including £600 from Newnham and £125 11s. from Ipsden), while at enclosure he was awarded 13 a. in North Stoke and a further 14 a. in Ipsden.21 The North Stoke glebe was leased, in the early 20th century to James Lindsay of Ipsden.22 By the 1860s–70s total gross income was c.£800 a year, from which the curate of North Stoke and Newnham received £120 and the curate of Stoke Row £30.23 Net income stood at c.£400 following Newnham’s separation in 1907–8, and at c.£550 after the union with Mongewell in 1927.24 Rectory and Vicarage Houses Little is known of the medieval rectory house,25 although in 1396 part was apparently reserved for the vicar, in addition to his ‘priest’s houses’ in North Stoke and Ipsden.26 The North Stoke priest’s house was perhaps withheld or became uninhabitable, since in 1425 Bromhall priory was to provide a vicarage house and garden.27 By 1530 both that and the rectory house were dilapidated, presumably through the neglect of St John’s College, Cambridge, and the vicar’s accommodation remained ruinous in 1540.28 It was then located (and perhaps always had been) in the upper part of the rectory house’s south end, and in 1548 the vicar Thomas Bradshaw (1523–54) persuaded St John’s to build a new house on 17 Lincs.
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